User blog:Gabriel.vilela.319/Bartolomeo Cristofori,the first pianist
Bartolomeo Cristofori The man who invented the piano,one of the men I most admire in history with the best musical instrument invented. Bartolomeo Cristofori was born in Padua in the Republic of Venice. Nothing is known of his early life. A tale is told that he served as an apprentice to the great violin maker Nicolò Amati, based on the appearance in a 1680 census record of a "Christofaro Bartolomei" living in Amati's house in Cremona. However, as Stewart Pollens points out,this person cannot be Bartolomeo Cristofori, since the census records an age of 13, whereas Cristofori according to his baptismal record would have been 25 at the time. Pollens also gives strong reasons to doubt the authenticity of the cello and double bass instruments sometimes attributed to Cristofori. he total number of pianos built by Cristofori is unknown. Only three survive today, all dating from the 1720s. The piano as built by Cristofori in the 1720s boasted almost all of the features of the modern instrument. It differed in being of very light construction, lacking a metal frame; this meant that it could not produce an especially loud tone. This continued to be the rule for pianos until around 1820, when iron bracing was first introduced. Here are design details of Cristofori's instruments: Piano actions are complex mechanical devices which impose very specific design requirements, virtually all of which were met by Cristofori's action. First, a piano action must be arranged so that a key press does not actually lift the hammer all the way to the string. If it did, the hammer would block on the string and damp its vibrations. The position of the sprung 'hopper' or 'jack' centred in the key of Cristofori's action (see "I" in diagram below) is so adjusted that the hopper escapes from the 'notch' in the middle of the intermediate lever (G) just before the hammer © strikes the string, so that the hammer is not driven all the way but travels the remaining distance under its own momentum and then falls into the check (M). When the key is allowed to return to its position of rest, the jack springs back under the notch and a repeated blow is possible. Although Cristofori's design incorporates no specific device for repetition, the lightness of the action gives more facility for repetition than the heavier actions of the English type that developed in the first half of the 19th century, until these were provided with additions of one kind or another to facilitate repetition.Second, a piano action must greatly amplify the motion of the player's finger: in Cristofori's action, an intermediate lever (G) was used to translate every key motion into a hammer motion eight times greater in magnitude. Cristofori's multiple-lever design succeeded in providing the needed leverage in a small amount of space. Third, after the hammer strikes the string, the action must avoid an unwanted second blow, which could easily result from the hammer bouncing up and down within the space confining it. In Cristofori's action, this was accomplished by two means. By lifting the intermediate lever with a jack that disengages in its highest position, the Cristofori action made it possible for the hammer to fall (after its initial blow) to a position considerably lower than the highest position to which the key had lifted it. By itself, this mechanism greatly reduces the chance of an unwanted second blow. In addition, the Cristofori action also included a check (also called "back check"; M) that catches the hammer and holds it in a partially raised position until the player releases the key; the check also helped to prevent unwanted second blows. Cristofori's action was sufficiently complex and hard to build that it was a barrier to later builders, who tried to simplify it. However, Cristofori's viewpoint ultimately won out; the standard modern piano action is a still more complex and evolved version of Cristofori's original. Category:Blog posts